Thursday, July 01, 2004
The Whole Hog
Big Pig
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A VSO party at Terje's! Always a good bet for great food.
This one is extra special because Terje has been given three pigs in return for a favour. There is a community of doctors from Cuba here and some of them have volunteered to butcher and cook the piggies.
From what I've been told, they sliced each pig from chin to tail then laid them open onto hot stones and cooked them there. The process takes hours and results in very fatty but very tender meat. Delicious!
Being Cuban, the doctors dance all night long and leave the rest of us exhausted.
Martyrs Day
-----------
June 20th is the day when Eritrea remembers the people that died during the thirty year struggle for independence and the more recent border conflict with Ethiopia.
June 20th is also Jo's birthday.
On Saturday 19th the commemoration starts. In the evening the shops all close and candles are lit in windows and doorways. There is an eerie quiet in the side streets once the shutters have come down. Once we get to Liberation Avenue, we realise where all the people have gone. The street is empty of traffic and full of people walking slowly up and down, carrying candles. Very few bars or restaurants are open so the noise is subdued, apart from the music playing over loudspeakers outside the Ministry of Education, accompanying an art display. A stone relief, about 10 feet high, depicts tragedy under the Ethiopians: a woman is being run over by a tank in the foreground while others are being summarily slaughtered in the background. In front of the sculpture is a tableau featuring a prone mannekin and his overturned bicycle. Blood from the mannekin mingles with paint spilled from the pot he was carrying. I take it he has been shot. Perhaps this was a famous incident but I'm not sure.
The crowd don't seem particularly morose and, when we get to the Blue Nile for a pizza, the atmosphere is fine. Nobody's drinking beer though, and I don't think it's being served anywhere. It's a time for low-key respect and observance.
On Martyrs' Day / Jo's Birthday itself we decide to retreat to a couple of VSO houses and watch the last two Lord of the Rings films. When we emerge, blinking, the bars have reopened.
Hadida
------
A trip to see Tom and Fliss in the village of Hadida, about 30 Km from Decamhare.
I don't much like Decamhare. Of all the towns we have seen it is the one with the least charm and character. It is basically a straight tarmac road with lots of quite seedy looking bars.
We get there about 3pm on Saturday 26th July. Too late fro the bus to Hadida: there is a queue but after an hour and a half or so of waiting and a subsequent attempt at hitching we give up and resign ourselves to staying in Decamhare for the night. We find an okay pension ("The Denden") then head off for food at the Bana Hotel. The food's very good, the service is quick and efficient and the people are very friendly. A very atypical Eritrean restaurant. There's also an old geezer in the corner who's dancing and singing and pretending to take photographs with the radio he's carrying around his neck, so the place even has entertainment.
When we get backi to the hotel we're told we have to go down to the police station to register. This is quite common. The guy from the hotel leads us across town to the anonymous block of the police station. There, a friendly copper in jeans and muscle vest examines our residence permits and records our details. In Eritrea people are known by their first name then their father's first name, then their grandfather's first name. When hee asks us for our father's name we naturally give our surnames but when he asks for our grandfather's name we're a bit flummoxed. "Gavin Elkington Elkington and Joanna Hartigan Hartigan"? We decide to give our mothers' maiden names instead because the explanation would be too much hassle.
Next morning, after breakfast back at the Bana Hotel, we're on our way to Hadida. We leave about 10 o'clock and arrive at about 11.30, having overshot slightly because neither of us realised the bus continued past the village. A little bit of scouting around then Tom and Fliss appear from the midst of their school closing ceremony and, after watching a bit of prize-giving, Tom takes us up to their house.
They live in a hidmo with a more modern concrete block built onto the side. Tom sleeps in the hidmo on a beed moulded from mud and dung, Fliss sleeps in the more conventional; bed in the "house". It's wonderfully cosy. There is not a straight line in the whole hidmo structure. Mud mouldings provide shelves, seating and storage containers for grain that form one of the walls. These containers are about four feet high, forming the top two thirds of a dividing wall. They receive their grain in the top and deliver it via a bunghole at their base. Unfortunately, they are full of cockroaches instead of grain at the moment.
Tree trunk pillars hold up a tree trunk roof from which bits of mud and insects drop periodically. Blankets and pillows cushion the mud settee. The place smells of earth, wood and the gentle smoke from the candles. It's cool during the day and warm at night -- a much better insulator than the modern houses. We sit and chat -- Tome, Fliss, Jo and I -- and joke and laugh and drink beer and gin. A lovely night.
On the Monday we emerge blinking into the morning then make our way back to Decamhare. Another queue in Decamhare so we put our bags in place then have a Coke in a nearby cafe. After about half an hour a man appears at the head of the queue and starts issuing tickets along the line so I jump up and take my place next to our bags just in case he reaches us, although I don't hold out much hope because it looks as if there is more than a busful ahead of us judging by the line of stones. To keep a place in a queue, people will often use a stone. This strikes me as a daft system in a country where there are stones everywhere. Sometimes its impossible to tell if a stone has been placed deliberatle or if it just happens to be one of the many stones that litter the bus station anyway. Also, stones are quite hard to distinguish from one another. So, when the ticket man is doing his ticket job a crowd of people mob him to complain that he has passed over their stone or that he has given a ticket to someone whose stone was behind theirs. It's a ripe situation for a comedy sketch.
Fortunately we're in the first busload and get on our way to Asmara quickly then out to Shimangus Lalai for wine and Thai curry. (Vegetables in a packet mix Thai sauce, courtesy of one of Jo's friends.)
-------
A VSO party at Terje's! Always a good bet for great food.
This one is extra special because Terje has been given three pigs in return for a favour. There is a community of doctors from Cuba here and some of them have volunteered to butcher and cook the piggies.
From what I've been told, they sliced each pig from chin to tail then laid them open onto hot stones and cooked them there. The process takes hours and results in very fatty but very tender meat. Delicious!
Being Cuban, the doctors dance all night long and leave the rest of us exhausted.
Martyrs Day
-----------
June 20th is the day when Eritrea remembers the people that died during the thirty year struggle for independence and the more recent border conflict with Ethiopia.
June 20th is also Jo's birthday.
On Saturday 19th the commemoration starts. In the evening the shops all close and candles are lit in windows and doorways. There is an eerie quiet in the side streets once the shutters have come down. Once we get to Liberation Avenue, we realise where all the people have gone. The street is empty of traffic and full of people walking slowly up and down, carrying candles. Very few bars or restaurants are open so the noise is subdued, apart from the music playing over loudspeakers outside the Ministry of Education, accompanying an art display. A stone relief, about 10 feet high, depicts tragedy under the Ethiopians: a woman is being run over by a tank in the foreground while others are being summarily slaughtered in the background. In front of the sculpture is a tableau featuring a prone mannekin and his overturned bicycle. Blood from the mannekin mingles with paint spilled from the pot he was carrying. I take it he has been shot. Perhaps this was a famous incident but I'm not sure.
The crowd don't seem particularly morose and, when we get to the Blue Nile for a pizza, the atmosphere is fine. Nobody's drinking beer though, and I don't think it's being served anywhere. It's a time for low-key respect and observance.
On Martyrs' Day / Jo's Birthday itself we decide to retreat to a couple of VSO houses and watch the last two Lord of the Rings films. When we emerge, blinking, the bars have reopened.
Hadida
------
A trip to see Tom and Fliss in the village of Hadida, about 30 Km from Decamhare.
I don't much like Decamhare. Of all the towns we have seen it is the one with the least charm and character. It is basically a straight tarmac road with lots of quite seedy looking bars.
We get there about 3pm on Saturday 26th July. Too late fro the bus to Hadida: there is a queue but after an hour and a half or so of waiting and a subsequent attempt at hitching we give up and resign ourselves to staying in Decamhare for the night. We find an okay pension ("The Denden") then head off for food at the Bana Hotel. The food's very good, the service is quick and efficient and the people are very friendly. A very atypical Eritrean restaurant. There's also an old geezer in the corner who's dancing and singing and pretending to take photographs with the radio he's carrying around his neck, so the place even has entertainment.
When we get backi to the hotel we're told we have to go down to the police station to register. This is quite common. The guy from the hotel leads us across town to the anonymous block of the police station. There, a friendly copper in jeans and muscle vest examines our residence permits and records our details. In Eritrea people are known by their first name then their father's first name, then their grandfather's first name. When hee asks us for our father's name we naturally give our surnames but when he asks for our grandfather's name we're a bit flummoxed. "Gavin Elkington Elkington and Joanna Hartigan Hartigan"? We decide to give our mothers' maiden names instead because the explanation would be too much hassle.
Next morning, after breakfast back at the Bana Hotel, we're on our way to Hadida. We leave about 10 o'clock and arrive at about 11.30, having overshot slightly because neither of us realised the bus continued past the village. A little bit of scouting around then Tom and Fliss appear from the midst of their school closing ceremony and, after watching a bit of prize-giving, Tom takes us up to their house.
They live in a hidmo with a more modern concrete block built onto the side. Tom sleeps in the hidmo on a beed moulded from mud and dung, Fliss sleeps in the more conventional; bed in the "house". It's wonderfully cosy. There is not a straight line in the whole hidmo structure. Mud mouldings provide shelves, seating and storage containers for grain that form one of the walls. These containers are about four feet high, forming the top two thirds of a dividing wall. They receive their grain in the top and deliver it via a bunghole at their base. Unfortunately, they are full of cockroaches instead of grain at the moment.
Tree trunk pillars hold up a tree trunk roof from which bits of mud and insects drop periodically. Blankets and pillows cushion the mud settee. The place smells of earth, wood and the gentle smoke from the candles. It's cool during the day and warm at night -- a much better insulator than the modern houses. We sit and chat -- Tome, Fliss, Jo and I -- and joke and laugh and drink beer and gin. A lovely night.
On the Monday we emerge blinking into the morning then make our way back to Decamhare. Another queue in Decamhare so we put our bags in place then have a Coke in a nearby cafe. After about half an hour a man appears at the head of the queue and starts issuing tickets along the line so I jump up and take my place next to our bags just in case he reaches us, although I don't hold out much hope because it looks as if there is more than a busful ahead of us judging by the line of stones. To keep a place in a queue, people will often use a stone. This strikes me as a daft system in a country where there are stones everywhere. Sometimes its impossible to tell if a stone has been placed deliberatle or if it just happens to be one of the many stones that litter the bus station anyway. Also, stones are quite hard to distinguish from one another. So, when the ticket man is doing his ticket job a crowd of people mob him to complain that he has passed over their stone or that he has given a ticket to someone whose stone was behind theirs. It's a ripe situation for a comedy sketch.
Fortunately we're in the first busload and get on our way to Asmara quickly then out to Shimangus Lalai for wine and Thai curry. (Vegetables in a packet mix Thai sauce, courtesy of one of Jo's friends.)
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